Ian Somerhalder Quotes

When people connect to my work, it makes me feel great. A lot of that stuff is really deep, and when I play something and people feel what I feel, and use it in important situations in their lives, like at weddings or funerals, that's so powerful. It means I can connect with them on an important level.

Music means different things to different people and sometimes even different things to the same person at different moments of his life.

Accolades and lists may tell us about accomplishments, but life is meant to be experienced, not just accomplished. It's like the difference between reading books for the sake of reading and reading books just to get a good grade.

The authentic experience, where is that? Living the moment. That is something that we're losing.

I'm not looking at money, percentage points or grosses. This is my life, you know? To me, every day matters.

When you draw or paint a tree, you do not imitate the tree; you do not copy it exactly as it is, which would be mere photography. To be free to paint a tree or a flower or a sunset, you have to feel what it conveys to you: the significance, the meaning of it.

I don't just want to create products. I want to reach into people's hearts and minds. I want to create memories.

It's super dope when you connect with something personally.

Draw things that have some meaning to you. An apple, what does it mean? The object drawn doesn't matter so much. It's what you feel about it, what it means to you. A masterpiece could be made of a dish of turnips.

When we do not expect anything we can be ourselves. That is our way, to live fully in each moment of time.

Everyone gets meaning in different ways.

I'd like to think that what I've written over the years and what I'm doing now means something to people. People in the street all the time are saying "love the new record" or "I love that record," this tune or that tune. It means an awful lot, or it's been a big part of their lives. As a songwriter, what else would you really want? You're trying to connect with people, people's emotions, and maybe say something about their lives or feelings. That's probably a good enough compliment to receive, really.

A good song stays in your head because it's catchy, a great song stays because it means something to you.

Your primary purpose is to be here fully, and to be total in whatever you do so that the preciousness of the present moment does not become reduced to a means to an end. And there you have your life purpose. That's the very foundation of your life.

The point is to let the music be itself. If it doesn't mean anything to you, then it's bullsh*t.

The aim of living is life itself.

"What would people say about you when you're gone?" That to me was a very important question. I thought about that for a couple of years and said, "What people say about you when you're gone doesn't matter. You're gone." What really matters is, "What do you say about yourself in the here and now? Are you proud of what you're doing?" If you had a short lease and it ended today, or it ends tomorrow, what would you wish you would have done? You better do it.

Our subconscious works in metaphors, stories, and word play. That's why a particular story or movie may mean more to some people than to others. Have you considered why you quest for this tale now?

One of my interests in music has always been what it means, why it affects us the way it does.

Am I living in a way which is deeply satisfying to me, and which truly expresses me?

The only dream worth having, I told her, is to dream that you will live while you're alive and die only when you're dead.

I don't want to sound like I'm trying to be too deep about it, but when we play shows, music takes everybody on their own journey - because one song might mean something to me, that means something completely different to someone else.

I couldn't live without something that touches my heart. No one should.

Everyone has the attitude that movies aren't just disposable entertainment - they can really mean something. I love that, because that's the way I feel about films.

It's a foreground of my feeling. That place moves me. And I don't mean my country; it's part of our shared natural world that happens to be particular to a sense of wherever my storytelling inclinations come from and my own history of kind of being a road rat and travelling.